Registry records prosecutorial misconduct

The Center for Prosecutor Integrity’s registry can be found online here.

To read The Republic’s series “The Gray Area of Courtroom Conduct,” go here.

By Michael KieferThe Republic | azcentral.comSun Jan 12, 2014 9:43 PM

A Maryland-based watchdog group has created a registry to chronicle cases where federal prosecutors were found by the courts to have committed unethical behavior ranging from perjury to withholding evidence that could have shown a defendant was not guilty.

The Center for Prosecutor Integrity’s registry comprises 201 federal cases dating back to 1997 in which prosecutorial misconduct was found by a federal trial court or appeals court. It lists the type of case and the nature of the misconduct, from withholding evidence to perjury. The registry also includes any sanctions imposed by the court.

The information is intended to educate the public and provide a research tool for attorneys.

According to the center, the Registry of Prosecutorial Misconduct was created to provide hard data that could lead to accountability by prosecutors.

“We expect many groups will use it,” said E. Everett Bartlett, Center for Prosecutor Integrity president. Among those, Bartlett included lawmakers, criminal-justice programs, forward-looking prosecutor organizations, and advocacy groups such as the Innocence Project.

On its website, the Center for Prosecutor Integrity defines itself as an organization dedicated “to preserve the presumption of innocence, assure equal treatment under the law, and end wrongful convictions.” It defines prosecutorial misconduct as “a violation of a code of professional ethics or pertinent law, or other conduct that prejudices the administration of justice, whether intentional or inadvertent.”

Bartlett expects to expand the database, and his center has calculated that there have been at least 15,000 instances of prosecutorial misconduct in the U.S. since 1970 in all state and federal courts.

Bartlett said the registry was created following several articles about the issue of prosecutor conduct, including stories in USA Today and The Arizona Republic.

More than 75 percent of the ethical violations listed in the center’s registry were for Brady violations. The next-highest category of misconduct was for presenting inadmissible or false evidence.

A Brady violation is prosecutorial misconduct, specifically, an instance in which police or prosecutors fail to turn over evidence that could be used by a defendant in a criminal case to argue his or her innocence.

On Dec. 10, Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, highlighted the issue during his dissent to a court opinion.

“There is an epidemic of Brady violations abroad in the land. Only judges can put a stop to it,” he said.

The case Kozinski referred to was that of a man convicted of making the deadly poison ricin for use as a weapon. The 9th Circuit upheld the conviction, but Kozinski protested the fact that the lab that tested evidence for the presence of ricin was contaminated with the substance, calling into question the positive test results. The prosecutor knew that the testing method was being investigated and why but underplayed its importance and its extent to the defendant’s attorney. The conviction was not overturned, and Kozinski dissented. On Jan. 4, the New York Times ran an editorial on the subject, starting with Kozinski’s declaration.

In Texas, a judge was sentenced in November to 10 days injail for prosecutorial misconduct in a case he had participated in decades earlier as a prosecutor. The defendant spent 25 years in prison before he was exonerated.

Paul Charlton, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona, had mixed feelings about the registry and the current scrutiny of prosecutors.

“Anything that improves the criminal-justice system and allows them to see trends and improve prosecution is a good thing,” Charlton said. “But I would very much disagree that (prosecutorial misconduct) is rampant or epidemic. I believe that the vast majority of prosecutors are people of good faith who want to do good.”

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